Greater than 20 Percent of Malware Articles Miss the Point

Infectious fear is infectious

PCMag and others have released articles based on a blog post from Sophos. The original post discussed how frequently malware designed for Windows is found on Mac computers. What these articles mostly demonstrate is that we really need to understand security: what it is, and why it matters. The largest threats to security are complacency and misunderstanding; users need to grasp the problem rather than have it burried under weak analogies and illusions of software crutches.

Your data and computational ability can be very valuable to people looking to exploit it.

The point of security is not to avoid malware, nor is it to remove it if you failed to avoid it. Those actions are absolutely necessary components of security -- do those things -- but they are not the goal of security. The goal of security is to retain control of what is yours. At the same time, be a good neighbor and make it easier for others to do the same with what is theirs.

Your operating system is irrelevant. You could run Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, the ‘nixes, or whatever else. Every useful operating system has vulnerabilities and run vulnerable applications. The user is also very often tricked into loading untrusted code either directly or delivering it within data to a vulnerable application.

Blindly fearing malware -- such as what would happen if someone were to draw parallels to Chlamydia -- does not help you to understand it. There are reasons why malware exists; there are certain things which malware is capable of; and there are certain things which malware is not.

The single biggest threat to security is complacency. Your information is valuable and you are responsible to prevent it from being exploited. The addition of a computer does not change the fundamental problem. Use the same caution on your computer and mobile devices as you should on the phone or in person. You would not leave your credit card information on a park bench unmonitored.

Essentially the sandboxing will be the biggest help in ensuring even if a virus does get onto your pc, it wouldn't be able to do anything and can be easily cleaned.

i tried sandboxie browser setting. when your browse under sandbox, now and then you would download something and want to move the file out of sandbox to your hard drive proper. you can easily do that in sandboxie to authorize the downloaded file like a video etc to move out of the sandbox.

PS: forgot to mention a hardware router with firewall and portforwarding is a must these days. i don't recommend upnp, instead do the port forwarding manually :X

We're all human, and that means that we will all be tricked at some point or other, no matter how paranoid we get, short of living in a concrete cell with no communications at all.

I just live my life normally, with nothing more than my usual habitual paranoia (such as turning off/blocking all services that I don't need or want like remote access or NetBIOS, and running NoScript in my browser). For the rest, I just keep an eye on things like my credit reports, or reports of e-mails from "me" that I never sent, that will tip me off if things are wrong.

Shimata! I forgot to mention one very helpful security utility for Windows, that I always use and recommend! EMET 2.1 from Microsoft, which lets you turn on/manage all those windows security enhancements, both globally, and for individual programs, even if those programs don't support said features.

HI Scott!
I am grateful for this post, it was informative. But my lap restarts these days after showing a blue screen. i tried this Spyhunter anti spyware tool. the issue is now solved after i scanned with it, but now some error notifications appear.
any solution?